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Posts tagged “community projects” (Page 7)
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Tower of Hanoi robot
Pololu forum user Martin_H posted about his robot that plays the Tower of Hanoi with paper blocks. An RP5 chassis drives along a track, locating itself with electrical tape seen by QTR sensors. It serves as the base for a custom robot arm made from U-channel and driven by servos. The robot is controlled by a Baby Orangutan B-328 Robot Controller.
The forum post has a parts list and more details.
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Motorizing a crank-powered adjustable-height desk
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One of our customers motorized his crank-powered adjustable-height desk by using a brushed DC motor to drive a chain that turns the crank. He details the project in this blog post. He described the project as a “learning experience”. He started with a Pololu Simple Motor Controller 18v7, which unfortunately did not survive a stall when driving an 18 V drill motor. Some drivers survive over-current situations better than others, but our general recommendation is to choose a motor driver with a continuous current rating above the stall current of your motor.
Cordless drill motors—which typically don’t come with a datasheet—can easily draw tens of amps when stalled. Note that the “peak” current rating is not usually relevant, since a driver might only be able to withstand that current for a few milliseconds. Also, you need to be especially careful when operating at high voltages: an 18 V battery can easily generate spikes above the 40 V limit of this driver if connections are made or broken while the system is powered.
After some technical support from Brandon, he switched to the beefier Pololu Simple High-Power Motor Controller 24v12 (and a lower-current motor with a datasheet, and a current-limiting power supply) to control the motor connected to his drive mechanism made from Actobotics parts. The Simple Motor Controller’s support for limit switches also came in handy for cutting off the motors when the desk reached the maximum or minimum height. He also added some LEDs for under-desk lighting.
After the electronics and mechanisms were all working, he used the Pololu USB Software Development Kit to create a C# desktop application that controls the Simple Motor Controller over USB.
The build log along with more pictures and videos is in this blog post.
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Wireless timing system for drag racing RC cars
Mike Kohn, creator of “remote control food”, used a pair of Pololu Wixel programmable USB wireless modules to control a drag racing “Christmas tree” (the traffic lights used at the start of a drag race) and finish line electronics. They communicate wirelessly (with the Wixel’s TI CC2511F32 integrated 2.4 GHz radio transceiver), timing the race and displaying the result on 7-segment LCDs. Instead of using C like most of our customers, Mike tried out his own 8051 assembler naken_asm on this project, even rewriting our example radio communication code himself in assembly. The system has break beam sensors at both the start line (to detect false starts) and the finish line. Each sensor is made from two inexpensive parts: a red diode laser and a light sensor transistor.
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His assembly source code, schematics, and additional pictures and vidoes are available on his web page.
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Analog PID line follower
In his blog post, Will Moore shows off his sleek line follower that uses an analog circuit for the PID control. The circuit is made from passive components and operational amplifiers, and the PID constants can be tuned with the potentiometers on the top. The build uses a pair of Pololu 50:1 micro metal gearmotors and motor brackets.
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For more details, including schematics, performance analysis, and an additional video, see the blog post.
Mission Pinball Framework supports Maestro Servo Controllers
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The Mission Pinball Framework is open-source software for running physical pinball machines. It can be used to control a re-themed pinball machine or a completely custom one. The framework supports using Pololu Maestro USB servo controllers to control RC hobby servos to create interesting pinball mechanisms. More details on using the Maestros with the pinball framework are available in their detailed documentation.
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MINTomat: an over-complicated bubble gum dispenser
MINTomat lets you operate two robot arms and a wirelessly controlled custom robot based on a Pololu Zumo chassis to dispense a gumball in an roundabout way. Their custom Zumo board is controlled with FreeRTOS on an NXP ARM Cortex-M4F, and uses a Nordic Semiconductor nRF24L01+ 2.4 GHz transceiver for wireless communication with other parts of the system. A few Pololu VL6180X time-of-flight distance sensor carriers are used for obstacle detection and navigation. The cabinet is illuminated with LED strips. A detailed build log is available at this blog post.
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Just Keep Swimming: a goldfish-steered mobile fish tank
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During Build18 2017, “an annual engineering festival held by the Electrical and Computer Engineering department at Carnegie Mellon University and run by students”, a team of CMU students presented a goldfish-steered mobile fish tank that allows the goldfish to decide where to drive. The robot is controlled by a Raspberry Pi and uses some Pololu parts listed below. They posted a video of the robot on Facebook, and their project webpage has a description and a parts list.
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Robotic snow plow
Robert Cowan, former host of the SparkFun Friday new product videos, has made a series of videos on his YouTube channel about building a robotic snow plow. The videos includes the parts he uses, design decisions, and iterations he made along the way. Many components of the robot are reused wheelchair parts. In part 2, he uses a Pololu Simple Motor Controller 18v7 to control the linear actuator for the plow’s tilt mechanism from an RC transmitter.
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Laser cut 6-string banjo frame
Here is a brief video a customer just sent us showing how he used our custom laser cutting service to create the frame on his custom 6-string banjo.
“Knock knock unlock” puzzle box
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With the holiday season upon us, many are on the hunt for interesting projects that we can give as gifts. This year, why not make your project about unveiling your gift? You would still have to get an actual gift to put inside the box, but you’d win major style points. Forum member Bob Day’s knock knock unlock puzzle box has no visible way of opening it, but given the right combination of knocks will unlatch itself with the help of a servo and several other electronic components inside. The puzzle box is controlled by an A-Star Micro, which is powered by our S7V8F5 voltage regulator and a mini LV pushbutton power switch. The power switch is turned on by a mercury tilt switch and turned off by the A-Star if no knocks are received for about 30 seconds. This power switch circuit allows power to be completely turned off, which should extend the battery life tremendously over just leaving the A-Star on. (For advanced microcontroller programmers, another option would be to put the A-Star into a low-power mode.) A list of the parts and connections used and some example code for the box are given on Bob’s blog.
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“Knock Knock Unlock” Puzzle Box outside view. |
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If you found this project interesting, you might also like a similar GPS puzzle box, also created by Bob, that we featured on our blog last year. That box unlocked when brought to a specific location and included a simpler toggle switch for power and an LCD screen.
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